


Means-as-is

by Laetitia_Laetitii



Category: Runescape
Genre: Gen, Mahjarrat, Undisclosed characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-22
Updated: 2016-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-28 10:42:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6325837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laetitia_Laetitii/pseuds/Laetitia_Laetitii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An interlude in the Menaphite-Zarosian War. One of the many new things the Mahjarrat encountered for the first time on Gielinor was writing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Means-as-is

The thing would not go away.

There was little left of the day, and Thaneni had been using it to make copies of the quartermaster’s inventory. Sitting at his usual spot under the awning, his back comfortably against a still sun-warmed wall, he had been too immersed in his work to notice the crouched figure.

It squatted on its thin haunches a few feet away from him, ragged robes trailing in the dirt. Thaneni had no idea whence it had appeared, nor how long it had been watching him. It was a disquieting thought. The creatures could move without a single sound when they wanted, their clawed feet barely leaving tracks, their silhouettes blending with the shadows about. Regardless of how many times he was reminded that they were the Menaphites’ only hope against the Invasion, Thaneni could never look at them without wishing they’d go away.

While it stayed on spot, the thing was never quite still. It tossed and shook its ridged head; clawed toes scratching at the sand, and periodically a black tongue would dart out to run across its sharp, triangular teeth. Those who had conversed with its kind assured that the gesture had to do with smelling rather than eating, but this knowledge did not make the gesture any less disturbing. Especially so when it was quiet clear that this one had its gleaming, irisless eyes fixed at him.

He had feigned obliviousness for as long he could, but apparently the Things were none too good at taking hints. Resigned, Thaneni raised his eyes from his papyrus, and looked up to the monstrous face.

The skin was so thick it cracked and scaled. The features were heavy and grotesque, with stark, primitive patterns tattooed upon them. Tusk-like spurs of bone flanked its jaw, and heavy ridges ran from its brow to the back of its head. Between the brows, almost lost in skin-folds was its only beautiful feature, a shard of dark crystal. How it had been grafted into the flesh could not be imagined.

As Thaneni watched, the Thing extended a bony hand to point at his papyrus. It swallowed once, twice, mouthed a word soundlessly, and then said in a low, throaty growl:

“What is how is?”

Thaneni looked at the papyrus and the carefully painted pictograms on it. Then he looked at the tools he had spread out on a reed mat – brushes, seal wax, pots of ink, and all the while he wondered how to explain writing to a being whose people were confused by representative art. Finally, he decided to start from the start.

“It’s called writing,” he said. “It's a way of -” Then Thaneni realised he could not explain exactly  _what_ it was a way of. Unperturbed, he decided to try another approach. “That there,” he said, pointing at a symbol, “means flour. That there means sacks. And that group of figures is a number, two-hundred-forty-two. Those at the top for the hundreds, those for the dozens, and the ones at the bottom mean two. Means there’s two hundred and forty two sacks of flour in the storehouse.”

Abruptly, the Thing scuttled forward on all fours, and dropped to a sitting position right beside him. One knee rested on the ground, another was drawn to its chest, and as cloth falls and drapes as it’s wont to do, Thaneni could see more of the creature than he had ever wanted to. Its head was cocked to one side, its brow furrowed to a mass of wrinkles.

“Means?”

“Means!” Thaneni shouted now, panicking. “Means! This is, means salt! This is flour! This is beer! This-” Disregarding all concern of ruining his work, he stabbed at the inkpot with his brush, and scrawled a crude profile in the middle of the free space. “Icthlarin! You know Icthlarin! Here, that’s his ears, that’s his eye, that’s his snout, and all that means and is Icthlarin!” A death-mask was never as expressionless. “It. Means. Icthlarin! Here, that means a pyramid, just like its outline! That means an ibis! That means a man! And that there means flour!”

The thing let out a low keen, followed by a whimper he knew signified assent. Snort for no, whimper for yes.

“ _Iehit_ means what is? As is here means what is?”

“YES!” Thaneni cried; suddenly relieved as if he had been saved from a terrible danger,feeling the relaxation spread over him but still horrified and hating himself for it, “What is HERE means things that are THERE AND HERE AND ALL ABOUT. THIS HERE MEANS THAT THERE.”

He had emphasized his words with stabs of the reed brush, leaving both his parchment and the dirt around them decorated with droplets of ink. They surveyed the effect together, the man and the Thing, and for a while neither spoke. Then, as the ground had immersed the last of its share, his companion lunged suddenly and snatched up one of Thaneni’s brushes.

Everyone said the Things did not eat, but there was something hungry about its expression. In a gesture that was almost human it nodded at the spread-out parchment, and uttered a single, undeniable command:

_“Show-how.”_


End file.
